


A Familiar Face

by rabbitxheart



Series: Sandman/Teen Wolf Crossovers [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV), The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-13
Updated: 2013-08-13
Packaged: 2017-12-23 08:37:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/924192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbitxheart/pseuds/rabbitxheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is constantly surrounded by death. He just never expected her to be this nice.</p><p>or</p><p>Six times Stiles met Death before it was his time to go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Familiar Face

**Author's Note:**

> Not 100% season 3 compliant.
> 
> Edit: I've decided I'll write another chapter from other character's points of view. This might be a few months away since I'm moving to uni in a few days but once I've settled in, I'll do something about it :)

_For some folks death is a release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them. - Death of the Endless_

***

 

“Hi.”

Her voice is barely a whisper, careful to only wake one of the bed’s occupants. Stiles opens his eyes to look over his mother and at the girl by their bed.

“You’re not a nurse,” he mumbles from where he’s tucked in at his mother’s side. They can fit in her bed now, the two of them, despite his growth spurt and long limbs. It’s like the more space she leaves open as she slowly vanishes, the more he takes over.

“No, I’m not. What’s your name, sweetie?”

“Stiles.”

“Is that a nickname or your real name?”

“A nickname. My name is weird.” The girl smiles softly. Her skin is pale, not sick and yellow like his mother, but pale like she used to be, pale like Stiles. Her hair is pitch black and messy. Maybe they’re family, from where Grandpa was that he himself has never been.

“Some call me Teleute. This here is my brother Morpheus.” She nods to the foot of the bed and… Huh.

He didn’t even see the man standing there, but it’s dark in the room. It has to be, or his mother gets headaches. They look a lot alike, Teleute and Morpheus, pale skin and dark hair, but his eyes are… glinting. Like staring at a lamp through smudgy glass. Maybe it’s just the street lamp outside reflecting in them or something.

“Hello, Stiles.”

“I recognize you.”

“We have met before, but you might not remember it.” Even his voice seems familiar.

“It’s almost three am. You should sleep,” says Teleute and tilts her head to the side. “Growing boys need to rest.”

“I have to be here if mommy wakes up. She cries sometimes because her stomach hurts and daddy’s at work.”

The man- Morpheus, he thinks to himself, moves so he’s standing at Stiles’ side.

“She won’t hurt anymore, Stiles. That’s why I’m here,” says Teleute. “But you have to sleep, hun.”

“I can take away the nightmares if you want.” Morpheus offers. If he’d been anywhere else, Stiles would have felt afraid, but Morpheus feels safe. Familiar.

“You can do that?”

Morpheus nods.

“First say goodnight to your mother,” Teleute tells him, and he does, leans up a little and kisses her cheek. She doesn’t stir.

“Goodnight, mommy. I love you.”

He settles back in and Morpheus pulls the cover up around him a little tighter, just the way Stiles likes it.

“Close your eyes.”

Stiles does. A breeze travels across his face and he falls into a deep sleep, about his mother’s hands while they were still warm and the way her laughter used to resonate throughout the whole house.

His mother doesn’t wake up crying again. She never wakes up at all.

 

 

***

Stiles holds Heather’s ice cold hand, the way he used to when they were small and she was afraid of the dark of the basement and what might hide in it.

He should’ve stayed with her, but he didn’t, so he will now, and hopes his hand in hers might make it less scary for her, wherever she might be.

Something moves in the corner of his eye, like black hair and pale skin, but when he turns his head, there’s nothing there.

 

 

***

”Shit,” says Peter, stopping in his tracks. “ _Shit._ ”

Stiles follows his stare to a young girl sitting in the shade of the Hale house. She seems utterly familiar, like she might be a student at Beacon Hills High, but he’s not sure. She looks young enough, but right at that line where she might as well be ten years older than them.

“Don’t tell me you’ve knocked up some random teenager, seriously.” Isaac sighs next to him.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Stilinski,” Peter says with no force at all behind it, still not taking his eyes off of the girl on the steps to the house. “Thanks for the ride, you can go back to Derek’s now.”

“What, weren’t we supposed to get the last stuff from under the floor boards?”

“I’ll do it myself, I know where all of it is anyway. Just… go.”

With that, Peter walks towards the girl on the porch. By the time they’ve gotten back in the jeep, she stands up and wraps her arms around Peter.

“Dude, who was that? Did she seem familiar to you, too?”

“I think I’ve seen her at the graveyard once or twice?” Isaac guesses and closes the door.

“Great. Of course the undead will attract the necrophiliacs,” Stiles shudders.

“No, not like that, she… I’ve seen her talk to people at funerals and stuff, I think she might be a grief counsellor or something.”

“Huh.”

 

 

***

The next day the entire pack stuff their faces with pizza and watch the Matrix. The name Morpheus lingers, but he can’t say why, instead it just sits there at the edge of his memories like something familiar but gone, like an old favourite sweater or movie from his childhood. He _knows_ that he knows, he just can’t remember. He’s just about to look it up on Wikipedia when Derek’s phone rings, Stiles’ dad informing them that the Hale house has collapsed after years of miraculously keeping itself standing, taking Peter with it to its death.

 

He gets a real funeral this time. They all go, even Allison, but he’s not overly sure if they are there to say goodbye or to make sure he stays in the ground this time around. It takes seeing the grave for Stiles to be able to imagine that Peter had once been a real person, not just a sarcastic husk of a werewolf.

Being able to trace the name of his wife and children on the headstone is like a bucket of cold water over the head, seeing physical proof that there once was more to him than what they all had seen. Derek is leaning on him while trying to hide it, trying to cling to his anger towards Peter. He wraps his arm around Derek’s back and pulls him in. It feels a bit weird, having grown an inch or two, to be a little taller than him.

“He was still your uncle, Derek. It’s okay for you to mourn him, you know that, right?”

“He killed my sister.”

“Yeah. But he was someone before that, too.”

Derek nods. Then huffs and tilts his head just a little, leaning it against Stiles’ shoulder.

“He took me and Laura out to drive his car when we were kids and mom found out. She was furious, shifted, alpha voice and everything. He told her that if we’d crash, we’d heal, and just smirked at her. He was kind of a dick, even before.” There’s no resentment. In fact, Derek sounds happy for a second or two, and it absolutely breaks Stiles’ heart.

“Definitely sounds like him.” Stiles steals a glance at Derek and he’s smiling. It’s small, but it’s there.

“I miss him.”

Stiles nods and turns around, wrapping Derek up in a tight hug. Looking over his shoulder he sees the same girl he saw with Peter sitting by a mausoleum at the very back of the graveyard. Stiles only knows it’s Derek’s family’s because Derek avoided it like the plague but kept staring at it during the funeral.

She locks eyes with him with a sad smile, says something, and gets up and leaves. There’s no one nearby to talk to and Stiles can’t read lips, but it still doesn’t feel like it was directed at him.

 

 

***

Gerard comes back, smelling of decay and worse, and when Allison can’t deliver the final blow, Derek does it instead, no hesitation at all in his features when he swipes his claws through Gerard’s throat. She thanks him, but the look on his face makes Stiles think it might have been more for Derek’s own sake than hers. Maybe even a little for Kate as well, but the others don’t know about that and Stiles won’t ask, not when Derek barely opens up as it is. Instead he cradles his sprained wrist and limps over to where Isaac is propped up against a huge rock, still passed out from a blow to the head, lets his wolfsbane infused baseball bat clatter to the ground and sits down on the rock. The werewolves and Allison start digging, digging deep enough to keep the dead buried.

 

He doesn’t see her until she sits down next to him. Unlike all the other times he’s seen her, she’s dressed all in red, not black, the bright poppy red making her seem even paler.

“I looked it up. Teleute. It means Death.” He whispers, low enough for her ears only. “You’re not here for Isaac, too, are you?”

“No. Just Gerard.”

Stiles nods.

“Is he really your brother? Morpheus? What does he do?”

“There are more of us. I guide people into life and out of it. He was the king of dreams.” He looks at her as she continues to watch the digging. Her hair is as he remembers it, so is her skin, but he never saw the ankh around her neck. She looks tired, shoulders slumped and eyes puffy. She’s been crying. He lays a careful arm across her shoulders, a little scared of how she’ll react, but she leans into him and he goes back to looking at the pack.

“Was?”

She nods solemnly.

“We don’t die, not really,” she sniffs. “But the Dream that was my brother passed on, another taking his place. I’m at his funeral right now, but the dead won’t wait. He wouldn’t want me to neglect my responsibilities.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you. You’re a sweet young man, Stiles,” Death says and squeezes his wrist carefully before she walks toward Gerard’s body with her head hung low, fading more and more for every step she takes.

None of the others see her.

 

 

***

Three months later, Stiles walks into his room to find her sitting on his bed, back to wearing her usual black jeans and a Nine Inch Nails t-shirt, not much unlike the one his mother had when he was younger. After weeks of nearly no sleep and constant vigilance, he thinks he might be hallucinating.

Or it’s his dad. Shit.

 

“Already?” He croaks and her face falls a little, then she shakes her head quickly.

“No. No, no, you have decades left, both of you. I’m here about Derek.”

“Fuck.” The relief is gone as quick as it appeared and Stiles feels like he’s about to vomit. Not that he’s eaten anything, no; he’s spent the entire weekend looking for Derek. Another week with absolutely nothing to show for it. “Please… Please just tell me it was quick?” He can barely speak through the lump in his throat.

She frowns at him.

“What was?”

“Derek. There was blood all over the loft and we haven’t seen him in two months, the last time…” he trails off, but Death nods.

“Erica.”

“We don’t know what they’ve done to his body. I don’t- We don’t know anything. Please just, just give me this? Tell me it was _quick_.”

“I wasn’t there,” she says and folds her leg under her where she sits on his bed. She shrugs, and that’s probably the worst, because Derek has acted like death has been his only friend for years and now not even Death gives a damn.

“What?!” Stiles starts pacing, can’t be still, desperation surging through his body and itching under his skin like the burn of a panic attack but without the panic itself. “You’re Death, a lot to do, I get it, but goddamnit you have _one_ job. You could be there for Peter but not for him? I saw you _hug_ Peter, but you left Derek to die alone? Is he going to haunt us now, is that how this works, huh? I’ve seen him try to sleep, okay, fully dressed and facing the door with his shoulders drawn up to his ears and now you’re telling me he won’t even be allowed to relax when he’s d-”

He bites back a sob, just barely, and his legs give in on him, just as he gets to the bed.  He slumps down next to Death, maybe sits on her a little, he’s not sure, but the world is still spinning and he definitely feels like he’s about to puke. Leaning down until his face is close to his knees to keep the hyperventilation at bay feels way too much like a habit these days.

“Stiles.” Gentle hands pull at him a little, pull him closer until he’s leaning into her side.

“No! I should’ve-” He collapses across her lap, buries his face in her jean clad knees and he can’t stop the tears now because he gets this, _he_ gets this and Derek didn’t. Stiles isn’t even dead. “I should’ve been there, I could have saved him,” he sobs. “I _always_ do.” Her hand rests at the base of his skull, scratching lightly at the soft hairs there.

“Stiles, look at me.” Stiles shakes his head, keeps his face against the fabric of her knees. “Sweetie,” she says, softer. Almost apologetic. “I was there when the first lives came to, and when they became the first deaths.” Her voice is soothing, like he remembers it from the hospital room as his mother took her last breaths. “I’ve held the hands of beggars and queens, led masses of people from battlefields and gas chambers. I held my brother’s hand and your mother’s.” She pets his back slowly as he tries to calm his breathing. “I held Talia Hale when she cried for the children that followed her and the ones that didn’t. I have never let a single life die alone.”

“What do you mean?” Stiles blinks his tears away, tries to will his breathing to even out. “It looked like the fucking Shining elevators in there, what do you mean?”

“I wasn’t there. Derek didn’t die. Deucalion did, but Derek wasn’t there by the time I got there. Kali running the alpha pack will end in more bloodshed, but she needs one more alpha to make a pack. If she has Derek? Not good.”

“Do you know where they are?”

She closes her eyes like she’s trying to remember something and Stiles takes the opportunity to wipe his nose on his sleeve.

“I do now. But I’m going to need you to help me with Derek.”

 

She gets up and waits for him to climb to his feet. 

“So what do we do, hold her down and let Derek kill her? What, why are you looking at me funny?”

“Stiles. I’m Death.”

“Okay, fair point,” he agrees. “So, my car or yours?”

“Mine.”

She takes his hand and the world spins too quickly for him to catch up.

 

 

“Oh shit,” is the first thing he says as his feet touch ground and he stumbles towards the concrete wall. “I knew JK Rowling had to get Apparition from somewhere,” Stiles wheezes when the world is back in order, feeling both out of breath and squeezed within an inch of his life.

Of course they’re in an old military compound. Stiles would laugh if he wasn’t running to the other side of the basement where Derek is curled up in the corner, much smaller than he’s ever seen him. Most cuts have closed, but there is blood everywhere and he’s covered in bruises.

“Shit, Derek!”

“Stiles.” He sighs, still not opening his eyes, and frowns.

“I’m here, I’m here. You okay, buddy?” The panic in his voice is getting more and more audible by the second.

Derek opens his feverish eyes, just stares at him.

“You’re here?” Then it seems to sink in and he starts trying to stand up, which is not happening, not by himself. “You’re here. You can’t be here, Stiles, they’ll _kill_ you, they-”

The door slams shut behind Stiles’ back. He quickly checks to make sure Derek is still mostly in one piece and pulls him up until they’re both standing. When he turns around, Kali is walking up to Death while the twins guard the door.

Kali laughs and lets her fangs drop, eyes becoming red in a literal blink of an eye.

“Who’s the Marilyn Manson fangirl?”

Death is as calm as ever as she walks up to Kali, right where both she and the twins would have to pass to get to Derek and him. She’s smiling, even, not predatory and evil but just as sweetly as she had when she walked up to hug Peter.

“We should-” Derek starts, tries to pry loose from Stiles to defend the girl in front him them and spin them around to get Stiles behind him at the same time.

“No, sshh,” Stiles shushes him and changes his grip around Derek’s waist, holding him steadier.

“Ennis didn’t recognize me either. Deucalion did, said he’d heard my voice when he killed his second beta. It’s a little different for everyone.” She pauses, tilts her head. “Your betas sure didn’t expect me. Not the first ones, at least.”

“What are you talking about?” Kali growls impatiently.

“Maybe this will help.”

Her face transforms as Stiles watches, just like the first time he saw Peter take his alpha shape, but more fluent and silent. Graceful and flowing, not violent or painful, like all the others. Both Derek and the twins gasp as she drops down on all fours, thick fur just as charcoal black as her hair always is. She’s huge and, for the first time, intimidating even to Stiles. She glances back at them and her eyes are alpha red, but so much deeper, so much more infinite, like Dream’s eyes back in the hospital room.

It should probably sign for Stiles to stop getting into danger when he’s faced with Death in giant wolf form and his first impulse is to cuddle her.

“No,” Kali shakes her head and takes a step back, moving towards the twins. “No, not now.”

“Did you really think you were the first to take the name of a deity in an attempt to make yourself more powerful, less mortal?” Death asks and shifts back again. “There will always be more like you and none of them ever think it’s their time to go, not even the ones that kill themselves.” Kali blinks and her eyes are brown again, confused and panicked and Stiles almost feels sorry for her, were it not for Derek’s blood, slicking up his fingers, making it near impossible to hold him up.

“Time’s up,” Death says like an apology and reaches up to wipe a tear from Kali’s cheek. She closes her eyes and leans into the touch, like she’s falling asleep, then keeps leaning until her knees give and she falls to the floor.

Death looks over at the twins.

“You two? Behave.”

Ethan stares, frozen right where he’s been the whole time, and Aiden nods frantically, ashy pale and shaking of fear. Death mutters something about doing her brother’s work for him as she walks over to them, then rests her hands on their shoulders and the world starts spinning again.

 

 

“What’s with the wolf shape?” Stiles asks later as they stumble into the loft.

“I told you I had many names,” she as she helps him set Derek down on the bed. “Teleute, Black Shuck…”

“Lupa,” Derek adds, almost reverently. “The wolf that took care of Romulus and Remus.”

“That’s one of my favourites,” she admits. “It’s so rare for people to remember me for the other half of my job. I don’t just end lives, you know. I start them, too.”

Derek watches each step she takes as she rearranges what they stirred when they arrived and gets things to clean his wounds with.

“Yes, Derek?” She says and locks eyes with him after three full minutes of staring.

“How do you two…? You’re not dead, are you?” Derek stops staring at her and looks at Stiles where he’s rummaging through his drawers after clean clothes for him to wear.

“No, no, I’m not,” Stiles shakes his head, sitting down next to him on the bed with a pair of sweats.

Derek’s next exhale is half relief, half sob, and he runs a hand over his face.

“Am I?”

Death calmly sits down by his feet and takes his hands in hers, carefully wiping the blood off of them.

“You’re still alive.”

“Why?” Stiles has to fight down the impulse to yell at him, because if anybody would ask Death herself why he’s not dead yet, it would be Derek Hale.

“Do you _want_ to be dead?”

Derek looks like he might actually consider it an option for a few heartbeats, then his eyes meet Stiles’ and he feels torn open like a book for Derek to read, all masks transparent and useless.

Derek must feel something similar, but he still keeps his gaze locked with Stiles. When he speaks, it’s barely even directed at Death, but at Stiles.

“No. I don’t want to die.” This time Stiles can’t keep his relief off of his face. He doesn’t want to, either. He feels a clammy hand around his wrist and turns his hand, grabbing a steady hold of Derek’s. Derek sighs and breaks their gaze, looking back at Death.

“Good,” Death answers. “Somebody told me you weren’t supposed to die yet. That means it’s my job to make sure you don’t. The universe balances itself out, and you’ve had far too much bad to go before you get some good. It’s going to get better from now on.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Derek replies, but it lacks the same bitterness Stiles expected it to have.

“I know,” Death smiles fondly. “Now, as much as I like you both, I don’t want to see either of you for at least 50 years or so,” she winks and brushes some dust off of her knees. They both watch as she walks to the door of the loft. When she reaches it she stops and turns to look back at them. She’s smiling, big and bright and Stiles finds himself smiling back.

“I’d tell you to take care of eachother, but it’s pretty clear you already do that.”

With that, she rounds the corner and the sound of her boots against the concrete echo for a few steps, and then vanishes.

 

 

***

It has been nearly 65 years since they saw her last, but she looks as young as ever when she appears at the foot of their bed. Derek has suspected it, says he’s been hearing her laugh in the white noise of their kitchen radio, just like Stiles has seen her in the corner of his eye again. Death just smiles and takes their hands in hers.

“Come on,” she says. “Let’s go meet your families.”


End file.
